The Rabbit’s Foot
His father had given it to him.
Oddly enough on an Easter Sunday — and he, still a boy who believed in nocturnal candy deliveries by long-eared rodents who were closet confectioners. On that morning he had come to expect chocolate bunnies and eggs with chewy marshmallow yolks, not the severed foot of an innocent backyard hopper.
It was white with the stump end encased in a gold cap with a gold beaded chain. His father handed it to him later in that holiday afternoon after the young boy had recovered from his sugar-induced nap. Whether it was meant as a gift sincere or as an ironic statement of all things Easter was never determined, but his father did add an edited explanation of the foot’s purpose and mythology: it will bring luck.
Even at that tender age the boy thought, not so lucky for the rabbit.
That night the boy dreamed of a summer meadow, flower-freckled, and full of rabbits lunching on Nature’s salad of leaves and grasses. With the zoom lens that dreams often come with he could see that every rabbit had a cane or a crutch. One had a walker like his grandfather used. Some were so ill-fated as to have multiple injuries and were pushed about in wheelchairs by groundhog attendants.
The dream disturbed the boy awake. That dawn the rabbit’s foot went deep into a dresser drawer to remain unseen for succeeding years.
Found again there while looking for something else. Held in hand and remembered. He sees how the chain can be unsnapped. Entering now the age of the teens he is struck by the idea that this could be thought of as cool by his peers so he hung the foot from a belt loop where it could dangle with ease or hide tucked into a jean pocket.
There it remained, a talisman, an amulet — seldom thought of and yet its presence known.
At fifteen he called upon its power. While asking a girl out for the first time, it was out of his pocket hidden beneath the cafeteria table where he stroked its fur with his thumb during the posing of his question. She said yes.
But he never attributed her answer to the foot’s supposed magic. So once again the foot slipped into obscurity, tucked in the shadows of closed drawers and cupboard boxes.
Yet once again to aid romance, in his twenty-third year he called upon the foot’s service. Searching for it and once finding it, carrying it in his suit pocket as he dropped to his knee before a different girl to ask a weightier question. She said yes. And he carried it again in his tuxedo pocket on their wedding day, as insurance against last-minute doubts.
Then it was always with him, more out of habit than with belief.
One night, after the clocks had fallen back and the roads got dark earlier, he was on his way home from work on a small state highway when he saw a car approaching on a perpendicular country road at full running speed. He had the right of way. She ran the stop sign.
The air bags deployed. Both cars were totaled. The rabbit’s foot swung like a pendulum on his key ring as he walked away unscathed.
Years passed. Things were discovered growing inside him that should not be. He embraced the news with courage; modern medical science sometimes worked miracles. The solution was surgery.
He held the foot while he was prepped. He held it as he was wheeled beneath the too-bright lights. He held it while he counted backwards. He got to ninety-two.
Then the nurse took the unsanitary rabbit’s foot from his relaxing hand.
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